Love Is Not A Victory March
by LizzieCriss
Summary: It's Kurt's 19th birthday, and it turns out to be a day he will never forget. Rated M for a reason. Character death! Blaingst! Not for the faint of heart...
1. I used to live alone before I knew you

**So, this story is something I've been tossing back and forth in my mind for a few weeks now and I finally got fed up with thinking about it and wrote it. And now I'm publishing it. Cause I'm an idiot. Anyways, yeah... let me know what you think.**

**Warning: Character Death! Don't read it if you don't like it!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Glee (sadly).**

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><p>When Kurt woke up on May 27, 2012, it seemed just like any normal Sunday. The sunlight was gently streaming in through the curtains in his room, leaving patterns of golden light streaked across his carpet. There were birds just outside his window chirping cheerily and he could hear his family—already wide awake—downstairs making breakfast. But this wasn't just your average day. No, it was Kurt Hummel's 19th birthday.<p>

Kurt rubbed his eyes and stretched before bouncing out of bed excitedly to get started on his morning routine of showering and moisturizing. He took extra care today, being sure he was completely clean and relaxed and that there wasn't a blemish in sight anywhere on his body. After he had his hair properly fixed and spent about 20 minutes trying to decide what he was going to wear on such a special day—the outfit he had planned out the night before simply did not suit him today—he traipsed downstairs to greet his family.

When he walked into the kitchen, he immediately noticed the brightly colored streamers dangling from every corner of the dining room that was connected to it. There was a large, shimmery banner on the far wall that read "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" in multicolored letters and sitting at the table was his family—Burt, Carole, and Finn—with a large tray of freshly baked wild berry and lemon poppy muffins splayed out on top of the table. Kurt of course already knew that he would find these muffins when he came downstairs, not only because he could smell them baking from the moment he stepped foot out of the shower, but because it had been a Hummel birthday tradition since before his mom had passed away.

"Happy Birthday!" his family chimed as they each leapt out of their seats to give Kurt a hug

"Thank you." He grinned at all of them. "So, who's ready for breakfast?"

"Me!" Finn yelled. Before anyone could stop him, the boy was sitting at the table, his plate already piled with at least half a dozen muffins. They all couldn't help but laugh at Finn and his constant eagerness towards anything food related.

The muffins, made by Burt, were delicious as always. After breakfast, Kurt moved to help Carole wash and dry dishes like he always did.

"Uh-uhn, mister!" Carole chastised him, "It's your birthday. You can have the day off." And with that Carole plopped her step-son back in his seat at the table and planted a kiss on top of his head.

"So, bud, what do you have planned for today?" Burt smiled warmly at his son.

"Well, Rachel, Mercedes, and Tina are taking me to lunch at Breadstix and then we're going shopping. Then I was planning on having dinner here," Kurt returned his father's smile, "and _then_ Blaine apparently has something planned for later tonight. He refuses to tell me what though." Kurt's brow furrowed in frustration and his father laughed. "It's not funny! You know how much I hate surprises like that!"

"Kurt, you love surprises."

"Yeah, I do. But I really want to know what we're doing. Actually, now that I mention it, I think I'm gonna go call Blaine."

"Don't pester the kid!" Burt called after his son, "You'll make him nervous. It's a miracle you haven't already scared him away!" But it was too late, Kurt was already in the next room over and had his phone out and was dialing Blaine's number.

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><p>Blaine was standing in his family's kitchen humming to himself as he packed the picnic basket for Kurt's birthday surprise when his cell phone went off.<p>

"Well, hello there, birthday boy!"

"Hi." Blaine could hear the smile in his boyfriend's voice. "So, I was wondering…"

"Yes."

"Could you possibly give me a teensy, tiny hint as to what we're doing tonight?" Blaine chuckled. "I mean, I need to know how I'm supposed to dress. Is it casual? Or fancy?" Kurt paused, "Not that I'm expecting anything fancy!" he sputtered.

Blaine felt his smile growing at how adorable his boyfriend was being. He could just picture Kurt sitting on the couch in his family's sitting room, fidgeting with that childlike excitement that everyone gets on their birthday.

He began turning the key in his hand over in his fingers as he thought. If everything went according to plan, the rain would hold out until late in the night. "Dress for outdoors."

He heard Kurt's affronted gasp on the other end of the line. "_Outdoors_?"

"Yep. You heard me right."

"Oookaaay…"

"Just trust me. I'll pick you up at 8:00. I love you."

"I love you, too."

"Oh, and Kurt?"

"Yes, Blaine?"

"Happy Birthday."

"Thanks." Blaine could almost hear his boyfriend blushing when he hung up the phone. He took the now full picnic basket and placed it in the bottom of his fridge. Tonight was going to be a night that Kurt would never forget. And with graduation in two weeks, he needs to make the ones he has left count.

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><p>Shopping and lunch with the girls was great. Kurt had a fantastic time and he had almost forgotten his worry about Blaine's surprise plan until the four of them were in the parking lot walking back to Kurt's car and he noticed storm clouds in the distance. He thought he should call Blaine and tell him, but then he felt foolish. Of course Blaine would have a back-up plan. That boy thought of everything.<p>

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><p>It was almost 7:30 and Blaine wasn't anywhere near ready. Water was dripping in his eyes and his hair was a mess. His clothes were completely soaked through and he was going to have to change. But at least he'd managed to salvage most of the picnic and it was now sitting in the passenger's seat next to him. He'd been stupid to set everything up as early as he did and stupid to ignore the warning signs of the clouds that were rolling into town earlier in the afternoon. Luckily, he'd had the sense to get in his car and drive back to the spot he'd picked for the night when the wind began to pick up in that eerie way it always does just before a storm.<p>

He was so pissed. He'd had everything planned out perfectly. The spot on the hill that he had found a few miles outside of town was perfect for the picnic and the clearing around them would have made it easy to watch the lunar eclipse that was happening later on that night. He was going to feed Kurt some of his favorite foods and sing to him until he was too tired to even kiss him anymore. But nooo. The fucking storm front had to come through about 8 hours earlier than they said it was going to on the news that morning.

He fumbled, reaching in his pocket for his phone to call Kurt and tell him he was going to be a little late. He figured he could set things up on the floor in his bedroom. Sure, it wouldn't be the same and they couldn't watch the eclipse anymore and it was extremely less romantic, but at least it was a plan.

"Shit!" the phone slipped out of Blaine's still wet hands and onto the floorboard of the car. Blaine double checked the road in front of him. It was a rural area so the chances of a car suddenly appearing were very slim. He ducked down and snagged the phone as quick as he could and then popped back up.

Blaine looked out his windshield again, it was smeared with rivulets of rain water so he kicked up his wipers a speed. When his eyes met the road again, there was suddenly a large black creature that looked almost like a boar merely 30 feet in front of his car. Blaine slammed on his brakes and jerked his steering wheel to the right to avoid the sinister animal. Seconds later he heard a loud crack from the back of his car and suddenly he was sliding off the road and then rolling. And then everything went black.

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><p>Kurt had just finished his last slice of pizza and was about to stand and carry his plate into the kitchen to help Carole with the dishes—despite her protests— when it hit him. Something twisted in his gut and he felt a chill run all through his body. His head began to spin and he immediately sat back down. Then, just as soon as it came, the feeling was gone.<p>

"You alright, kid?" Burt stared at his son with concern.

"Y...yeah. Just a head rush I guess. I think I'm gonna go call Blaine and make sure our plans haven't changed because of the weather."

Kurt's fingers fumbled slightly as he dialed in the oh-so familiar number. _Ring….ring…._

Kurt felt the dizziness begin to return with the sixth ring. And then…

"_Hey! You've reached Blaine! Sorry I'm unable to answer the phone right now, but if you'll leave your name and phone number then I'll get back to you as soon as I can!_"

Kurt's blood ran cold before he shook it off. Everything was fine. Blaine was probably just getting ready… which is exactly what he needed to be doing. With that Kurt was off, up the stairs and to his room to change before his boyfriend's arrival.

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><p>Blaine was standing in the middle of the dark country road as the rain poured around him. He looked around but there was no one in sight. Not knowing what to do, he began walking in the direction of what he hoped was town. "<em>Odd…I could have sworn I was just…<em>" Blaine's thought was cut off as he stumbled over something round. He bent over to pick it up and found that it was an apple. "_Kurt's picnic…_"

Now Blaine began to panic. He spun around and saw the flames no more than a hundred feet away from him. They were coming off of his car that was now in a ditch and pinned up against a tree.

"NO!" Blaine sprinted over to the flaming heap of metal that used to be his car. "Shit! Shit! SHIT!" He reached into his pocket for his phone but it wasn't there. Suddenly, images of him picking it up off of the floorboard of the car flashed through his mind and then him flipping on his windshield wipers and then…had he really seen a boar?

His phone must've still been in the car. He began to approach the car to see if he could maybe see it and snag it, but then a burst of fire spit out of the driver's side window and Blaine didn't dare get any closer. There was no way in hell he was ever getting it back.

Blaine dragged his hand through his hair and let out a sigh. Then everything stopped and he felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck. "_But how did I end up down the road?_"

And that's when Blaine saw his body enveloped in flames.

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><p><strong>Yeah, so writing this made me sick to my stomach. Um...reviews? (I do plan on making this multiple chapters.)<strong>


	2. Can the lonely take the place of you?

** Yay! Update! Okay, so this chapter is seriously depressing. I had a breakdown while writing it because...reasons. Anways...the song for this chapter title is "The Lonely" by Christina Perri. Also, the title of the story and of the first chapter (and more chapters to come) are lyrics from the song "Hallelujah". The versions I listen to while writing this are the Imogen Heap and Rufus Wainwright ones. Not that anyone cares... So, yeah, depressing.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Glee.**

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><p>Blaine felt all of the air escape his lungs in a solid "<em>whoosh<em>" as his knees began to wobble, threatening to no longer hold his weight. He continued to stare at the burning corpse inside his now demolished vehicle. He thought he was going to vomit. _Could he even still vomit?_

The tears began to fall before he had even realized it and Blaine sunk to his knees on the side of the road. _Could he feel pain? Pleasure? Happiness? Would he ever feel anything again?_

"Kurt…" the name passed through his lips and he knew the answer to his previous questions. So this was it? He was going to have to leave his friends, his family, and his boyfriend without even saying goodbye. He was so _young_. He had such a bright future. And then in a few seconds it was crushed just like the frame of his car. This was the end.

He pounded his fist on the wet pavement in rage and the guttural cry that erupted from his body should have been heard for miles. But it wasn't; it was only heard by one.

"It's not the end, you know."

Blaine jumped as heard the small voice come from behind him. He spun around and his eyes were met with the most ethereal creature he had ever seen. Her whitish-blonde hair waved down her back and her ears, which were pointed in an elfish manner, stuck out of it. Her head was topped with a golden circlet that was wrapped in ivy. She was barefoot and clad in a simple white dress and there seemed to be a dim, golden glow surrounding the air around her.

"Wh-what? Wh-who are you?" Blaine's voice shook despite his best efforts to keep his already crumbled composure.

"It's not the end. Unless you want it to be that is." The creature extended her hand towards Blaine, "I'm Abby."

Blaine reluctantly took it and Abby helped him up off of the ground. "I'm Blaine."

"I know."

"How do yo…"

"No time for that. I don't have long and neither do you. You have a decision to make and a very important one at that. The choice is yours." She folded her arms as she studied Blaine.

Blaine noticed that the rain was not touching her skin. In fact, the water seemed to be landing outside of the golden aura that surrounded her completely. Blaine looked down at his hands and noticed that he wasn't wet either. In fact, his clothes were completely dry.

"What choice?" his voice was gravelly from his screams and tears.

"Well," she began to gently and rhythmically tap her fingers on her arm, "you can come with me to the other side. _Or_, you can choose to stay here. We have special circumstances for those who have already met their soul mates and you fall under this category."

Blaine felt the bile rising in his throat and he tried to bite back the tears that were beginning to flood over. "Kurt." His voice was barely a whisper. "K-kurt was my soul mate." His voice wavered but he felt the conviction in his own words, he'd just never known it to be the truth.

"Yes, him. For cases like yours we allow you to continue to live in this world, invisible to the living. You can follow Kurt until it is his time and then you will both go to the other side together."

"Are you an angel?" Blaine stared up at the beautiful, illuminated creature in front of him through his tear glazed eyes.

"Not technically speaking. Some call us angels. Some call us reapers. What we really are is a bit muddled in the biblical sense, seeing as we are the cause of some souls' deaths."

"Were you mine?"

"Well, it is a bit odd to see a boar in the middle of the country side in Ohio, isn't it?" she smiled and Blaine felt a shiver run down his spine.

"That was you?"

"My kind can take many forms if we so choose." Her honeyed voice combined with the strong smell of smoke rolling off the vehicle behind him—that he refused to look at—made his gut clench. "As I was saying, you can choose to stay here and shadow Kurt for the rest of his natural life, or you can come with me. Most people choose to stay because they feel as if they are their loved one's 'guardian angel' in a sense. But I must warn you; very few have decided to stay here for the entire remainder of their partner's life. After they mourn, people move on with their lives. They get new jobs and hobbies, grow old, take new lovers even. If you are to stay, under no circumstances are you allowed to interfere with the path of Kurt's life. You will see things that have broken the spirits of men for centuries." Her eyes were cold and silver and they bore holes through Blaine as she spoke.

"That being said, you still can touch objects that humans own. You will become one of the creatures that humans, in their ignorance, call ghosts. Many of the spirits that haunt humans are either bored or bitter that their love has moved on with his or her life. If you make the decision to do this, there's nothing that I can do to stop you from haunting Kurt. That's not to say that I won't be checking up on you from time to time to ensure that you are obeying the code."

Blaine stared at the ground for several minutes as thunder cracked in the distance. His hands shook as he gazed back up at Abby and spoke, "Alright. I'll stay with him." His hands may have shook, but his voice did not waver. Blaine was sure in his decision. If Kurt was his soul mate, then there was no way in hell he was ever going to leave his side.

"Well, then I have a few rules to explain before I leave you…"

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><p>The day of the funeral was just as dreary and damp as Kurt's birthday had been. Kurt couldn't manage to stop the tremors in his hands. It seemed like he'd had them since the moment he'd found out about the accident. He remembered feeling cold and like his body was shattering into a million tiny shards of glass. He felt himself fall apart and he'd been numb ever since.<p>

In the week that had passed, he had gone through his daily life and felt absolutely nothing. Like a ghost of the boy that he once was. He was just going through the motions. He lost track of all sense of time. He only ate when Burt forced him to because Carole wouldn't stop crying at the sight of what had become of her step-son. They had even snuck into his room and left food on his desk in an attempt to get him to eat but he would just carry the dishes down in the morning and throw out the food. He couldn't feel happy. Couldn't smile. He felt like he couldn't _breathe_. The boy he loved _died_.

The day of the funeral was just as dreary and damp as the day Blaine had died, but Kurt barely noticed. He only noticed long enough to grab an umbrella as he left his house that afternoon.

Burt had refused to let him drive anywhere since the accident. _Like he would even want to_. He had nowhere to go besides school. Carole drove them all in silence.

They got to the funeral home and Kurt stepped out of the car before anyone else. He trudged ahead of his family in the rain and walked straight through the front doors. He didn't bother signing in or taking a program. He marched straight into the chapel. He barely made it five feet through the double doors when his knees buckled and gave way. He crumbled to the ground as his body was racked with violent sobs. The casket was closed. It was at that moment that he realized he was never going to see Blaine Anderson's face again.

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><p>The week following his death was one of the most difficult that Blaine had ever experienced. Watching Kurt's pain was worse than death itself. He wouldn't eat. He barely talked. He lay awake at night staring at his ceiling for hours before his eyes would finally drift close. Even in his sleep he appeared strained and broken. He hadn't cried once and Blaine so desperately wished that he would. <em>Anything<em> would be better than this, even crying.

It pained Blaine to be unable to do anything to help Kurt. After a few days of torture watching him, he got the idea to make him meals-or even heat up leftovers-and leave them on his desk in an attempt to coax him into eating on his own. It was in vain though as Kurt would simply carry the dishes down the next morning and throw away the food.

The day of his funeral it was pouring down rain before the sun was even up. Before Kurt woke up, he went to the closet near their front door and pulled out Kurt's umbrella and took it back up to his room to hang it on his bedpost.

He fidgeted watching the family get ready for the event. Was it weird to be nervous for your own funeral? When the time finally came to leave, the family raced out into the rain and piled into Carole's car. Blaine managed to slip into the backseat in between Kurt and Finn before they shut the doors. Kurt sat his dripping umbrella on Blaine's lap, but it landed on the leather of the seat instead, slipping straight through him. _Interesting…_

When Carole pulled into the parking lot of the funeral home, Blaine felt Kurt stiffen beside him. He looked into his boyfriend's beautiful blue eyes and he barely recognized them. It was like the light behind them that he so loved had completely vanished. It was at that moment that Blaine made it his mission to do everything in his power to bring that light back.

Suddenly Kurt threw the car door open and stepped out into the rain, leaving his umbrella behind. Finn grabbed it and called after him as he got out of the car but Kurt was already gone. Blaine followed Kurt into the building, matching his pace. Kurt burst through the double doors of the chapel, completely ignoring all of the ushers at the door greeting him.

Blaine watched as his boyfriend sank to the ground. Watched him curl into a ball and sob uncontrollably. He looked so small and fragile in that moment and Blaine wanted nothing more than to hold him while he cried. To stroke his hair and assure him that everything was going to be alright. That it was going to get better. That he still had his whole life to live and this was just a stepping stone towards bigger and better things. He wanted to tell him that it was okay. He wanted to tell him that he didn't feel any pain. He wanted to tell him that he would always be with him. He wanted to hold him and tell him that he would _always_ love him. But he couldn't. It was part of the rules.

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><p><strong>So, um, reviews?<strong>


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